Aging in America Lecture Series: Cellular Mechanisms of Aging

Date and Time
Location
Henley Hall, Room 1010
Malene Hansen
Malene Hansen

Regulation of Autophagy in Aging and Disease

The cytosolic recycling process of autophagy plays an important role in many age-related diseases and has been directly linked to aging, including in the nematode C. elegans where autophagy appears  beneficially induced in many conserved longevity models. As a critical process to ensure cellular homeostasis, autophagy is regulated at multiple levels, yet it remains a challenge in the field to understand how the regulation of autophagy is integrated at the cellular and molecular level to ensure health- and lifespan benefits. I will here discuss our progress on understanding the different molecular mechanisms employed by cells and organisms to regulate canonical as well as non-canonical functions of autophagy in aging and disease.

Biography

Dr. Hansen was born and raised in Denmark and received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Copenhagen University. Starting in 2001, Dr. Hansen carried out postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Cynthia Kenyon, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Francisco. She established her laboratory in 2007 at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, CA, studying molecular mechanisms of aging, and joined the Buck Institute in 2021 as Chief Scientific Officer and faculty member.

Dr. Hansen has been recognized for her research throughout her career, including an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Award, a Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, a Julie Martin Mid-Career Award in Aging Research and a Breakthrough in Gerontology Award supported by the Ellison Medical Foundation and American Association for Aging Research (AFAR). In 2021, she received the Irving Wright Award of Distinction from AFAR. Moreover, her lab has been funded by federal grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute for General Medical Sciences. Dr. Hansen serves as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple scientific journals and is a past chair of the National Institute of Health’s Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Aging study section.

Dr. Hansen has organized a number of international scientific conferences, including the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s meeting on Mechanisms of Aging from 2014-2018 and the 2020 Keystone meeting on Aging. She also co-organized the 2020/2022 Gordon Research Conference on Autophagy.